Unmade
by sciamachy-ism
Summary: Thor searches for Loki, who may or may not already be gone. Marvel siblings: Thor and Loki, Wanda and Pietro (mentioned), Gamora and Nebula. Thor and Wanda search for Loki. Loki and Nebula fight to survive in a harsh, cruel world. Gamora does not give up on her family. LOKI-CENTRIC FIC. WARNING: TRIGGERS: mentions of captivity, kidnapping, explicit torture, suicide, and death.
1. Chapter 1

_He has not killed his family._

 _Gamora knows that is why, even now, some part of him still refuses to break. He refuses to give up his father._

 _She can hear him screaming from the distant floors of the ship, echoing through the miles of pathways leading to her cage. She shivers and clutches at the collar around her neck tighter._

 _She closes her eyes and curls tightly around herself. Her mind is allowed to wander towards her plan._

 _Her way out._

 _She thinks and thinks through the sound of screaming. Tries so hard to think around the inevitable conclusion she reached weeks ago, even though she knows she will not be able to._

 _There is no other way. She would have to be alone. She would have to._

 _She will have to leave them behind._

* * *

"Good morning, Lady Maximoff."

Thor looks vaguely out of place in the middle of such ordinary things, amidst trains and cafes and people taking the subway to work. He looks obscure enough in an oversized hoodie that nobody throws them a second glance. It's good enough for her, so far.

"Wanda," she says automatically. "Just Wanda is fine."

The thought comes across Thor's mind like a whisper, so faint she almost misses it if she wasn't already expecting it. The people searching for the grief on her face.

(Pietro.)

"Hello," she adds. She almost forgets.

For a moment, they stare at each other awkwardly. It's not like there was time for pleasantries their last encounter. Thor gives her a friendly smile anyway, politely takes her coat and places their drinks, one coffee, one tea, on the table between them. It's late enough to be past the 6 AM morning rush to work and early enough for them to be the one of the few patrons in the small cafe.

Wanda vaguely notices Thor's forced smile. A brush against his thoughts and she catches the dread so heavy she's impressed he has managed to keep his face composed.

( _Rage. Grief. Storm._ )

Five months ago, it immediately would have set her on edge. Now, it's just blurry.

"You need my help with something," Wanda says.

She leans forward, watching his face closely. As always, too perceptive for comfort. Pietro distantly laughs at her, somewhere in her memories.

Thor squirms and releases a wave of anxiety that nearly overtakes her focus. She squints her eyes like she's looking through miles of fog, tries to focus on his face and on her own emotions. It takes her several long seconds before she can zoom in on the shadows beneath his eyes, the limp clothing, the unusual pallor in his skin. He hasn't washed his hair in a while.

"How did...? Um. Yes. Yes, I have come to ask a great favor of you, Lady Maximoff, if you would forgive my bluntness."

"Wanda," she says again. "And don't worry. I prefer bluntness."

Thor smiles again. She tries the same but her mouth feels crooked, wrong somehow, so she stops.

"I thank you," he says. "I have too long been accustomed to Asgard. I have been told our ways are quite brash. Forgive me, it has been a while."

Five months. It's been five months since Wanda's seen him, two days after the funeral. Thor glances around the room, eyes uneasy. His hesitancy is unfitting. He's stalling.

Wanda takes a sip of tea and nearly scalds her tongue.

"Yes, it has been a while," she lies.

"And... how are things? Everyone?"

She catches his thoughts again.

( _Pietro_.)

Another memory floats to the surface of his mind. Natasha Romanoff, her voice. This morning.

 _("She might not be able to handle this."_ )

"Everyone is fine," she says slowly. "Natasha's been a huge help. You know, adjusting."

Thor shifts in his seat, the memory getting louder in his head.

( _"She's still grieving, Thor. She isn't exactly in the right... headspace, right now."_ )

"Ah, yes. Lady Romanoff is indeed a wonderful friend and asset."

( _"Thor... do you know what post-traumatic stress is?"_ )

"Thor," she says quietly. "You don't have to make small talk. Just tell me."

Thor opens his mouth, then stops trying. Grief returns to his face and she cannot grasp whatever his thoughts keep coming back to. It reads like a tangled mess.

"Why did you come here to meet with me, of all people?"

( _Because you might understand._ )

( _Because no one else might._ )

Thor's secondhanded anxiety creeps into her skin and she flinches, trying to separate herself from Thor. It's easy to get tangled into emotions that aren't hers, to form thoughts that she's never thought before.

( _"It is easy to mistake another's loss for yours."_ )

And suddenly, she knows why he's here. Reads it in his head.

Please, no. Oh no. No no no no no. She begins retreating, frantically drawing away. Shutting the world away. Snapping the links connecting her mind and Thor's as quickly as she can.

"I need your help in..." He exhales deeply and closes his eyes. "I _ask_ for your help in finding my brother."

The name comes anyway. It slams into her with such a force that she forgets her hasty recoil from Thor's mind, abandons her efforts to sever Thor's thoughts and make her mind her own again. She can't help but hear what Thor is positively wailing in his mind.

( _Loki_ )

Thor leans forward, blue eyes dangerously hopeful. "I think he might be alive."

* * *

Silence. Then-

"I can't help you."

"Lady Maximoff-"

"Thor. I can't help you."

Thor knows better than to push. He leans back away, slowly letting his face fall into his hands.

"I should've been there," he says quietly.

( _Rain. A storm gathering momentum in the sky. Grey_.)

( _A strike of red where he left behind his cape, draped over a body._ )

"I thought him dead. I do not know... There is a chance but- I do not know, I-" He pauses, lost in his thoughts, images she can see too clearly and she wonders briefly if he knows exactly what he is doing.

"There is a chance this may all be in vain but I need- I need to know. He could be in a peril I would not wish on my greatest enemy. My little brother..."

Thor looks at her, desperation etched into every line.

What is the worst thing- to feel nothing all the time, or feel everything too deeply all at once? She's been having trouble telling the difference lately.

"Why did you come here?"

( _Because who else would help him?_ )

"You have the capabilities to do things- to _know_ things- I cannot even dream of. I needed to ask for your assistance. To find him. To know."

"That's not what I mean."

She's going to make him say it. Out loud. It's a small price to pay for what he's asking of her.

( _I thought of death and I thought of you._ )

Thor glances outside the rain-streaked window, eyes thick with tears. It takes him several tries to speak.

"I am truly sorry for your loss," is all he can say. "For what I ask of you. I am truly sorry."

Unlike others, he looks straight at her when he talks. Thunder shakes the window and she decides the worse thing is to feel everything so deeply that it feels like nothing at all.

There's a manila folder resting on Thor's lap. His weapon is nowhere to be seen. The sky has gotten stormy even though it should be sunny out. Such small things she's failed to notice. Why hasn't she before now?

She's been caught in a heavy sleep for five months and she's not sure she's ready to wake up yet.

The storm begins to take full hold and the two of them look out the window, the silence stretching, but not necessarily uncomfortable. The world behind the window is blurred and she counts the seconds between flash and sound.

It's right over their heads.

She breathes out, slowly. "Tell me everything."

* * *

 _The night she gets the collar off, she leaves._

 _But not before she says goodbye._

 _First, Nebula. She bends down to her unconscious sister to look at her one more time. She holds the side of her face to press her lips quickly against her bruised, wiry cheek._

 _Last, Loki. He is so weak that she is afraid to touch him._

 _He mouths something too quiet to hear, but Gamora understands the plea in his eyes anyway._

Please do not go.

 _She grabs the shirt they used to stop the bleeding from under the blankets draped over him, shoves it underneath her shirt._

 _She leaves him with instructions to press a rag down on the wound before she brushes the hair from his forehead to press her lips down._

 _His eyes shine with tears and fever._

I will not leave you behind _, is all she can promise before she starts to cry._

* * *

 _She throws herself out of the window she broke in the side of the ship._

 _The minute her feet touch solid ground, she runs._

* * *

A/N: I got the idea for this fic from reading sad stories, particularly "The Lovely Bones" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," both of which contain tragic dysfunctional families that will certainly fuck you up when thinking about the MCU, if your head space is anything like mine.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to write a story in which Thor searches for a captured Loki, with the help of other fractured siblings. I just love the entire sibling dynamic in the MCU, but worry not- this is still primarily a Loki-centric fic.

I have no idea if this particular story trope interests anyone, so please comment if it does. Let me know your thoughts.

Will update soon.


	2. Chapter 2

_There is no sun here._

 _If there was, that would be enough to keep him alive. Because then, all he would have to do is understand that there could be a way of reaching it. There would be a reason to try and go outside, to attempt escape, to think of some way out so that one day, he might reach the light again._

 _But there is no sun here. The air is toxic. The ground is poisoned. This is the only rock in this godforsaken system with any semblance of life. The only life found for light years around._

(They didn't try to hurt him right away. They talked.)

 _He knows without a doubt that Gamora is dead._

 _He runs a thousand different scenarios in his mind that all end the same. Gamora captured and shot dead. Gamora captured and tortured and then shot dead. Gamora's skull shattered from the height of the window. Gamora caught in the middle of a dust storm, choking on the poison fumes. Gamora running in pitch black dark, with nowhere to run to. Nowhere to go for miles. No food, no water, no shelter, no help. No sun._

 _Gamora lying dead and dry in the middle of star-lit desert._

("Tell us how to reach Asgard's treasures and we will give you Asgard." "Tell us and we will let you kill the Allfather yourself." "Tell us and we won't hurt you." "Tell us and we will let you live.")

(At first, he laughed.)

(They quickly taught him to stay quiet.)

* * *

 _They throw him in a dark room with no windows the day after Gamora leaves._

* * *

"Everything" was a heavy demand but the witch could pick out half of it in seconds alone.

He could see it the way her eyes shifted in response to what he thought, matching up almost exactly in reaction and response. It was eerie, this silent, second conversation they were having. One-sided— the witch understanding all of him and him understanding close to nothing, always large steps behind. It was familiar in a way that ached, memories of how another pair of eyes would hold the same perception Lady Maximoff conveyed in every glance.

Telepathy, Natasha had said. Witchcraft, others back home called it.

Thor knows having both is something to be wary of, but looking at Wanda Maximoff now, he can only see a young woman weighed down with a familiar grief. It simply hits too close to home to feel anything other than sorry.

Her eyes are slightly glazed over as he speaks, only showing sparks of alertness whenever something he says or thinks something that catches her attention. He quickly learns to avoid thinking about Pietro Maximoff as much as possible. It is not as simple as he hopes, trying not to think about something only to think of it more. Wanda flinches away from him every time and Thor is left with the constant, familiar guilt.

"What is that, first of all?" Wanda gestures to the folder Agent Romanoff prepared for him this morning, likely attempting to distract the both of them from his painful, confusing thoughts. The folder is rough in his hands, holding the only proof that his brother could be alive out there, somewhere.

Wanda perks up as she catches his train of thought, and Thor feels wholly uneased.

"This is your proof?"

Thor blinks hard, then clears his throat. "Yes- yes, it is. This is all that I have."

* * *

Thor hands the folder across the table to Wanda's open hands. The dark paint over her nails is chipped and faded.

She smoothly opens the folder and merely skims over the very top page, his detailed report of the events, her breathing quick and shallow. She moves on to the second page, this one a scan, and nearly drops the folder.

Her wide eyes shoot up to meet Thor's.

"I found the bloodied garment on my doorstep-"

"-three days ago," Wanda finishes for him, her voice breathless. Thor nods, then rolls his shoulders, tense. She turns back to the picture, mouth slightly gaping, tracing the picture of the bloodied sleeve with a chewed fingernail.

Wanda's nerves light along the back of her neck. It is obviously a piece of clothing, some form of tunic looking out of place with any type of fashion she's seen on Earth. At first glance, it looks black in color but the closer and longer that she looks, she can distinguish the dark splotches on the garment from the cloth's original green.

The dark stains are blood. A lot of it.

"I received that on my doorstep," he tells her, his voice shaking slightly, "and I did not understand it- at first," he tells her, close to rambling. "I recognized it as Loki's the minute I held it in my hand but I do not know who sent it or why they sent it and I can only wonder if there is a chance... if there is any hope that..."

He cannot finish and Wanda looks through the rest of the scans to allow him a brief respite in her questioning. He does not have to finish. She swallows down the bitter taste in her mouth.

There must be dozens of scans over the same piece of cloth, taken in every possible angle and position.

Her fingers trace the last picture. The entire garment looks like the fragment of a shirt, with one sleeve badly torn. The cloth has an overused air about it, giving off the impression that its wearer had put it on one day and did not to take it off for another year. There is a remarkable amount of dried blood around the midsection area and a dull sense of dread washes over her when she considers the sheer amount of blood. A significant amount of blood.

How much does it take to kill a god?

"Thor..."

"There is something else," he says quickly, afraid of Wanda continuing. He reaches into a leather satchel that she hadn't noticed before, and pulls out another folder. "Jane told me to put it in here- something about evidence contamination-" he babbles as he hands over the folder.

Wanda hesitantly opens it and reaches inside to find an air locked plastic bag, sealed tight against any possible contamination. It's a piece of yellowed paper. She thinks it's nothing but the page of a very old book until she sees the writing on the side.

She reads it. She pauses, looks up at Thor, her face searching his. There's despair but also hope. There's fear but also will. Rage but also fierce longing. It's the look of a man with something to fight for.

She wants nothing to do with it.

"I found it on my doorstep in London. I had only arrived there scarcely a week ago but somehow it was there. Whoever left it there must have known somehow that I would not be there at that precise moment. I was not at home but Jane-" His eyes turn dark. "Whoever left this should only be thankful that they did not touch her."

A simple phrase is written on the torn page.

 _HE WILL SUFFER._

She reads it in her head, over and over, until the words lose all meaning.

"I will give you some time, Lady Maximoff," Thor says quietly, after a while.

He seems to understand somehow how she's tuning out, overloaded with information and too many thoughts in her mind to sort out. She wonders how her face must look.

( _"Give her space when she needs it, Thor."_ )

She answers back something she does not catch but it must be sufficient because he nods and heads out towards the exit, pulling out a cell phone from his satchel that looks too small in his hand. Probably to call Natasha, ask her how he should handle her now.

She can't say she blames him. She doesn't even know how to handle herself.

Outside, thunder booms.

* * *

Wanda allows her gaze to wander.

Somehow, the light has shifted enough to let her know its well into the late morning hours by now. The TV behind where Thor was sitting has been playing the morning news for hours. She only now begins to notice it.

She people-watches for a while. Outside the cafe, a wailing child is yanked back by the sleeve of her jacket when she drifts too close to the warning yellow line. Her red faced father turns from his phone call, yells something to the child. Wanda cannot hear from where she's sitting, but the child cries harder. A man runs to make his stop and misses it anyway. Across the cafe, a long-haired woman leans against the wall, face halfway obscured from her open map.

More and more people come into the cafe, then out into the trains waiting outside. The noise is numbing on her thoughts, the everyday buzz and worry from people's everyday, normal lives more comforting than warm milk. It makes the folder in front of her almost feel separated from her- but not completely. Like a severed limb.

The pictures are blurry but still flashing behind her eyelids like some demented picture show she cannot turn off. And her mind is simultaneously strained in the fuzzy hold of a thousand New Yorkers' fluttering thoughts and emotions that pass over her head like a heady wind, only to drift away again.

She's caught in the tide, right where she likes to be these days.

She clutches her cup tighter and watches her fingers go white with the compression. She takes another sip of cold tea, rearranges the closed folder in front of her for what must be the 100th time this hour. The barista behind the register shoots her a look. It's probably nothing to do with her face, probably nothing to do with the same repeated images taking up the flat screen, probably nothing to do with recognition at all and probably something to do with the fact that she's taking up an entire table in what's beginning to be her five hour stay.

Where is Thor?

Her eyes find the flat screen mounted across the room. The same images over and over and over.

Drones attacking people. Humans draped over metal. Suits of armor crashing into buildings.

( _Bullets raining from the sky._ )

Sokovia on fire.

Five months of interviews and reviews and debates and investigations and questions and the reporters still keep finding new ways of saying the same exact thing.

 _We are not safe._

Wanda watches a man watching her on the news footage before his name rings out. He grabs his latte and heads out the entrance.

Wanda takes another sip of cold tea and twists her ring around her finger twelve times.

The Scarlet Witch takes out a drone alongside Captain America. The Hulk smashes into a crumbling tower and the blonde reporter spits out for the thirteenth time today, _Can we really trust these people?_

Wanda shifts the folder one more time. Everything is connected yet nothing makes sense, Thor has a brother, and when she looks for the crying child again, they are already gone. The hazy footage of the Scarlet Witch takes aim from behind the archer, and misses.

* * *

She goes after Thor when it is clear he is not returning to the cafe.

Outside the rain has only increased in density, leaving the meteorologists and weather channels to puzzle over the reason why Manhattan is pouring in the middle of August.

The rain soaks straight through her clothes into her skin in seconds. She could shield herself but chooses not to. The cold feels good on her pounding headache.

It is easy to follow the trail of faded grief from where Thor has been walking for hours. It is distinct from the others, his aura faint but warmer and gold and more familiar to her than the other threads. When she finally spots him, her hair is dripping and her mascara is running.

Thor looks no better. When he finally looks at her, he looks like a man with every reason in the world to be walking for hours in the rain.

His blonde hair almost looks black when it's wet.

She hands him back the manila folders from underneath her jacket, completely soggy, and says the last thing he is expecting to hear.

"I'll help you."

Thor can only gape at her, lost for words.

In the end, her answer was quite simple. It's what Pietro would expect her to do.

* * *

 _The room has four walls. He knows because he paced around and around and around it. It reminded him of that simple, essential fact to his sanity- the dark does not go on forever._

 _He started counting days by the number of paces- half a day was 2,500 laps around the room. A full day was 5,000. Day was the first half, the afternoon the second. He slept during what he decided was nighttime, the time he was too exhausted to walk around the room one more time._

 _He paced and paced and paced until the tips of his fingers were calloused and rough and every grove and rivet in his path against the wall was memorized._

 _He quickly stopped, by what his count was the fourth night, when he ran out of water._

 _Then, he took to counting out loud in the dark._

 _He figured that counting out loud took less time than pacing a full rotation around the room, so the entire sum of a full day must be larger than 2,500. 10,000 became a day, 15,000 an afternoon. His night beginning when he lost count._

 _He counted out loud in the dark, until his entire existence could be reduced to the sum of numbers._

(There is no sun. There is no way out there is no way out there is no way out there is no way no scenario no version of this where you come out on top)

 _There came a moment when he realized he wasn't counting anymore._

 _One of his thoughts must have gotten tangled into another, and another. Until whole days just passed without his permission. Until he could not find it in himself to care anymore about days and nights._

 _His thoughts lead to thoughts lead to more thoughts lead to Gamora._

 _Gamora broken. Gamora running and lost. Gamora abandoning them to save herself and dying anyway._

(So what is the point of this then? Why do you continue to keep looking for light in a place there is none?)

 _Gamora is dead and no one is coming. But he can't stop thinking because if he stops thinking that means he is dead._

(Why are you still here? Why are you still present? Why do you still live?)

 _If he stops thinking he'll forget his name. If he stops thinking, he loses the game. If he stops thinking, all that will be left is the black._

(Why?)

 _Thor is not coming._

(Why?)

 _It's been years since, but the same childlike fear of dark has returned and this time, there is no big brother's bed to run to._

(Why?)

 _He cannot see his hands in front of his face. He rubs his eyes until he can see myriads of galaxies but within seconds, they vanish into the blackness._

(Why?)

 _He cannot shake the feeling. Something hides in the dark._

(Why?)

 _There is something in the dark._

(You know why, Liesmith.)

 _Something is watching him in the dark._

(You lack conviction.)

* * *

A/N: Is anyone liking this? Please let me know!

I would love to hear what you think.


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